As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Fooled Again" (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the Jan. 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat.

The Florida panhandle is thoroughgoing Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper's editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, "The Shepherds and the Sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold's claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.

The pre-election statement by Diebold's CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in a million. (OMG, what a stupid thing to say!!)

Miller describes considerably more election fraud than voting machines programmed to count a proportion of Kerry votes as Bush votes. Voters were disenfranchised in a number of ways. Miller reports incidences of intimidation of, and reduced voting opportunities for, poorer voters who tend to vote Democrat.

Some of Miller's evidence is circumstantial. However, he documents widespread Republican dirty tricks and foul play. The media's indifference to a stolen election burns Miller as much as the stolen election itself.

Miller is not alone in his concerns. The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in response to a congressional request, investigated a number of complaints regarding the electronic voting machines.

Here are some of the problems noted in the GAO's September 2005 report:

Some voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.

It was possible to alter the machines so that a ballot cast for one candidate would be recorded for another.

Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.

Access was easily compromised and did not require a widespread conspiracy. A small handful of people is sufficient to steal an election. Curiously, the media have shown no interest in the GAO report. In my opinion, a free press has proven to be inconsistent with the recently permitted highly concentrated corporate ownership of the U.S. media.

The electronic voting machines leave virtually no paper trail, and their use involves private, potentially partisan corporations tabulating the votes with proprietary software that is not transparent.

A number of counties in various states have decided to return to paper ballots that can be verified and recounted. But now that Republicans have learned that they can use the electronic machines to control election outcomes, the disenfranchisement of Democrats is likely to be a permanent feature of American "democracy."

Other reports claim that the undersampling by pollsters of Democratic voters creates a percentage bias that exaggerates the number of Republican voters by as much as 5 percent, thus providing cover for vote fraud. If hard-to-reach Democratic voters, such as the working poor, are less likely to answer telephones, polls can create the illusion that there are more Republican voters than in fact exist.

If the electronic voting machines are then rigged to shift 5 percent or 6 percent of the vote to the Republican candidate, the result is not at odds with the expected result and can be used as "evidence" to counter the divergence between exit polls and vote tally.

The outcome of the 2004 presidential election has always struck me as strange. Although Kerry was a poor candidate and evaded the issue most on the public's mind, by November 2004 a majority of Americans were aware that Bush had led the country into a gratuitous war on the basis either of incompetence or deception.

By November 2004, it was completely clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that Bush had rushed to war. People were concerned by the changing rationales that Bush was offering for going to war. Moreover, the needless war was going badly, and the results bore no relationship to the rosy scenario painted at the time of the invasion. It seems contrary to American common sense for voters to have re-elected a president who had failed in such a dramatic way.

Miller directs our attention to Bush's high-handed treatment of dissenters. If electronic voting machines programmed by private Republican firms remain in our future, dissent will become pointless unless it boils over into revolution. Power-mad Republicans need to consider the result when democracy loses its legitimacy and only the rich have anything to lose.

The pre-election statement by Diebold's CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in a million.

Hmmm - and exit polls had Chavez losing in Venezuala and Fatah winning for the Palestinians. The network consortium that used to conduct exit polls was disbanded because of problems with those polls. Gee, Paul maybe something is wrong with exit polling - ya think?

Meanwhile, in the main state that the nutbars say was stolen - Ohio - only fifteen percent of the counties had computerized voting machines. Most of those were in Dem-controlled counties. And only one was in a county where the machines were from a Diebold subsidiary -and that was in a county with middlin' population.

So, in other words, to a sane person, there is no way the GOP could have used machines to steal Ohio. So what does that say about PCR?

21
posted on 01/30/2006 8:26:49 AM PST
by dirtboy
(My new years resolution is to quit using taglines...)

I would really love to have more time to get after Bush for his positions on spending and illegal immigration. But the left and the whackjob right spend so much energy attacking Bush with nonsense that I feel compelled to debunk this crap as it comes out. Unfortunately, the GOP must see that as support for their positions.

28
posted on 01/30/2006 8:29:17 AM PST
by dirtboy
(My new years resolution is to quit using taglines...)

Of course the election was stolen. That is the only way to explain why the American people voted against a candidate who:

-Supported, gay marriage, abortion on demand, and euthenasia. -Betrayed his country by undermining its efforts in Southeast Asia. -Lied about his war record in Southeast Asia and refused to release his records (still waiting). -Had a "secret" plan for Iraq that really was just to cut and run, as was done in Southeast Asia. -Voted for funding our troops fighting in Iraq, before voting against it. -Was against SUV's even though he drives one. -Thought tax cuts only favored the rich even though they revived the economy and everyone received one. -Believed the War on Terror was not really a war and should be handled by issuing arrest warrants and using law enforcement. -Decried that the President had lied about WMD's in Iraq even though he was on record as saying Iraq had WMD's. -Advocated turning over our national defense to the United Nations (read, France).

Yes, how could such a brilliant and superior candidate have lost!?!? Something was clearly wrong here as the exit polls, conducted by the ever neutral MSM, clearly showed that candidate to have won by a landslide. Call John Conyers, lets get some hearings going on this!!!!

Miller is not alone in his concerns. The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in response to a congressional request, investigated a number of complaints regarding the electronic voting machines.

I'll bet PCR also believes that Elvis is alive and living with the same aliens who built the pyramids. PCR leaves no doubt about the state of his mental competence.

The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in a million.

Show me one time when exit polls are 100% right.

All polls are wrong to some extent. Add in a flawed model (and in this case, results taken only partway through voting!), and they'll be even more wrong. Have them all done by the same organization, and, if it's wrong in one place, it's probably going to be off in another.

'A million to one?' Let's see the math on that one.

35
posted on 01/30/2006 8:31:49 AM PST
by atomicpossum
(Replies must follow approved guidelines or you will be kill-filed without appeal.)

How sad that they must dwell on fantasies for their loss and not the truth of it..Americans don't trust Democrats to protect the country. Indeed close your eyes and listen to Osama's latest rant about Bush's illegal war and his diminishing popularity..He could had gotten them straight from Ted's; John's, Harry's, and Nancy's democratic point paper.

Americans will never cede their safety over to the likes of Murtha, Rangle and Conyers...Americans may be many things but we're not suicidal

These guys are too funny. They are STILL absolutely clueless that they lost! CLUELESS. They simply cannot come to grips with REALITY. Bwahahahhahahahah.

It's like they have post traumatic stress syndrome. I mean, walk up behind these people and yell "Bush" and watch them fall to the floor, curl up in a fetal position, and whimper about some election being stolen from them. On...my...gosh.

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